Bloody Rose

by Nicholas Eames

She found Rose standing alone on the bluff, her crimson cloak and wind-whipped hair stark against the endless white of the Wastes. Rose turned at the crunch of footsteps, clearly relieved to find Tam there and not Freecloud, who’d probably have ordered her back inside before she caught a chill. There was a halfpipe in her teeth and a spent match in her fingers.

  Rose beckoned the bard with a tilt of her head. “Come stand here, would you?”

  Tam shuffled over and put her back to the wind as Rose struck a second match. This close, she noticed for the first time that she was taller than the mercenary by at least an inch.

  “Thanks.” Rose blew a plume from one side of her mouth, then offered the pipe to Tam.

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  “I’ll get a headache if I smoke it all,” Rose said, though her grin suggested she might be lying. “C’mon,” she urged. “All the cool kids are doing it.”

  Tam relented. She sucked down a lungful of smoke and coughed most of it back out before handing the pipe back to Rose.

  “Not bad, right?”

  “Not bad,” Tam lied. Her mouth tasted like the ashes of a pissed-on fire.

  Rose winked, took another puff, and squinted up at the sky. “They’ll be here soon,” she said, sounding considerably less enthusiastic than someone awaiting rescue from a wintry wasteland ought to have been. They’d contacted Rose’s father immediately after finding the scrying orb. Even by skyship the journey north from Coverdale should have taken several days, since flying by night over mountains was potentially hazardous, so if their rescuers did arrive today it would mean they had flown day and night to reach them.

  “Do you know who he sent?” she asked.

  “Sent?” Rose coughed a cloud of smoke herself before passing the pipe to Tam. “My father didn’t send anyone. He’s coming himself. Him and Uncle Moog.”

  “Uncle Moog?”

  “Arcandius Moog. The man who—”

  “He cured the rot,” Tam cut her off. “I know who he is.”

  “Then why ask?”

  “I just—never mind.” Tam decided to take a long drag of smoke instead of explaining that she’d been caught off guard. She was already thrilled by the prospect of meeting Golden Gabe face-to-face—and now she learned there were actually two members of Saga on their way? “The Kings of the Wyld,” she murmured.

  Rose rolled her eyes. “Gods, I’m sick of people calling them that. Kings of Sheer Dumb Luck is more like it. You wouldn’t believe half the stories I’ve heard. It’s a wonder they didn’t die on their first tour of the Heartwyld, and a miracle they made it across the last time.” She stole the pipe from the bard’s hands. “Anyway, my father never killed a Simurg.”

  He might still get the chance, Tam thought, thanks to us. “So, what’s next?” she asked, though the answer seemed obvious.

  Rose tapped a clump of ash from the halfpipe’s tip. “Nothing,” she said. “We’re done.”

  “What? What do you mean, done?”

  “We killed the Dragoneater,” Rose said. “This”—she waved a hand to indicate the lake below—“is the top of the mountain. As good as it gets. The Simurg was the biggest, baddest monster in the world, and we killed it. Not the Raincrows, or the so-called Kings of the Wyld. Fable.” She drew on the pipe and breathed a stream of white smoke over one shoulder. “That’s our story. And this is where it ends.”

  “What about the Brumal Horde?” Tam asked. “The Winter Queen?”

  “The Winter Queen? You mean Astra, the Archon’s wife?” Rose scoffed. “What about her?”

  “She tricked us! She used you to kill the Simurg so she could take control of it. Freecloud thinks she’s in league with the Brumal Horde.”

  “She might be,” Rose admitted. “But the Brumal Horde’s not our problem.”

  The wind picked up, tousling their hair and dragging at the bottom of Tam’s longcoat. “What if Freecloud’s right?” she pressed. “What if Astra and Brontide are working together? Do you expect people will thank us for what we’ve done? Will we be heroes, do you think? Or the fools who offered up the world on a silver platter?”

  Rose took another drag and spent a moment examining the halfpipe’s glowing tip. “It doesn’t matter,” she said eventually, though Tam could tell she was lying. “I made a promise, and I intend to keep it.”

  “A promise to Freecloud?”

  “To myself,” Rose said. She passed the pipe over and drew her hood against the chill. “I probably should have quit after Castia. I’d dragged my friends across the Heartwyld and got them killed. I would have died there if not for Cloud, and we’d both be dead if my dad hadn’t arrived with every merc in Grandual at his back. But I couldn’t quit. I didn’t want to. I was raised on my father’s stories, spoon-fed glory until I hungered for it—until I thought I’d starve without it.”

  Tam nodded. She, too, had been the daughter of a mercenary; they had that in common, if little else.

  “Growing up,” Rose continued, “I wanted more than anything to outshine my father, to be remembered as something other than Gabriel’s Girl. But even after the cyclops, and especially after Castia, nothing changed. Instead, I’d become the catalyst for my father’s greatest adventure. He was the hero, and I was his happily ever after. Just another damsel in distress,” she said sourly. “I knew then that if I didn’t do something truly remarkable, then that’s how the world would remember me. If they remembered me at all. And then Wren came along.”

  For once Tam managed to exhale fumes instead of coughing them out. She said nothing, for fear of putting Rose off the topic of her daughter.

  “I didn’t want to be a mother,” Rose confessed. “I wasn’t at all ready, and if she was anyone but Cloud’s … Well, there are teas … potions I could have swallowed … and poof—crisis averted.” She was silent for a few seconds, gazing with her mind’s eye down a path she might have taken. “But I could tell it was important to Freecloud. Children are a blessing to his kind. The sylfs, he says, are proof that our people and his need not be enemies. That we’re capable of something better. Coexistence.”

  Tam raised an eyebrow. “A little late for that, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe,” Rose admitted. “But anyway, a part of me hoped that becoming a mother would change my mind. That having a kid would make me want to settle down. That it would be … enough.” She shook her head fractionally. “But it wasn’t. If anything, it was worse. I—gods, this sounds awful—I actually resented my daughter, and Freecloud, because they needed me to be someone I wasn’t. Because they deserved that, and I couldn’t give it to them.”

  Tam blew another puff of smoke. She was getting the hang of this halfpipe, finally. “And now you can?” she asked.

  “Now the Simurg is dead,” Rose said. “Now I’ve done something my father can never do, and I’m ready to try again.” A smile crept across her lips, thin and bright as the first glow of sunrise. “I was a hell of a mercenary, right? Maybe I’ll make a decent mother, if it’s not too late. I sure as hell can’t be any worse at it than my old man.”

  Tam chuckled. “He was that bad?”

  Before Rose could answer, a sound like crashing waves drifted down from above. Within moments, a skyship came plunging from the haze. It was the size of a fishing dhow, wreathed in streaming cloud, and though it was too distant still to read the name stamped on its hull, Tam knew the Old Glory the moment she saw it.

  Rose reached over and plucked the halfpipe from Tam’s gaping mouth. “He wasn’t great,” she said, stealing one last drag before flicking the ashen stub into the snow. “But he has his moments.”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Old Glory

  They bid farewell to their yethik hosts and were escorted by Farager’s hunting party to the lip of ice overlooking Mirrormere.

  “You’re sure you want to stay?” Freecloud asked the ex-Raincrow before they parted.

  “I’m sure,” said Farager, signing his words as he spoke them. “There’s nothing left for
me south of the Shields. I’ve got no family left. My bandmates are all gone. But this lot …” Farager motioned to the warriors behind him. “They get me, you know? Besides, I’m going to be a father!”

  “What!?” Freecloud’s ears shot straight up.

  “Are you kidding?” Roderick asked. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Of course I’m kidding, ya dumb shits!” Farager cackled, and the yethiks at his back laughed hysterically. “See what I mean? I belong here.” He waved, and his sackcloth arms flailed like a puppet drowning. “Good-bye and good luck!” he called out as they started across the ice. “Have fun fighting the Horde!”

  A man whose resplendent robes marked him as either a wizard or a dreadfully eccentric librarian leapt up from the pilot’s chair as Tam and the others climbed aboard Vanguard’s old skyship. The bald crown of his head cracked against one of the clouded glass candle-jars suspended from the skyship’s rigging.

  “Snakes and bloody lions, who put that there?” He threw a glare at the offending jar. The old man’s fringe of long hair was the same stark white as his beard, both of which shimmered like silk in the swaying candlelight as he sprang forward to greet Tam. “Welcome aboard!” he said, shaking her hand like a man trying to wrest his wedding ring from a snake’s gullet. “I’m—”

  “Arcandius Moog,” she finished for him. “You were in Saga.”

  “I was!” The wizard beamed proudly.

  “You cured the rot.”

  “True. Though a troll did most of the work.”

  “You burnt down the Riot House …”

  “That was purely by accident,” the wizard insisted.

  “… and killed Akatung the Dread.”

  “I only sent him through a portal to the bottom of the ocean, so technically the ocean killed him. Wait”—he frowned—“who are you and how do you know everything I’ve ever done?”

  Gabriel, who she’d been introduced to when he first arrived, put a hand on her shoulder. Rose’s father was everything she’d imagined he would be: charming and charismatic, attractive despite the silver streaking his fabled blond hair. “Moog, this is Tuck and Lily Hashford’s girl.”

  “Ah!” The wizard’s face brightened in recognition, then darkened at the memory of her mother’s fate. “Ah.” His sadness passed swiftly, vanishing into the wrinkles creasing his face. The wizard didn’t seem the sort to dwell on sorrow for very long. “It’s a pleasure to meet you …”

  “Tam.”

  “Tam!” He sized her up, frowning at her coat as though trying to remember which despotic druin warlord had been wearing it when he’d seen it last. “Gods of Goblinkind, you mercs are getting younger every year!”

  “I’m just the bard,” she told him.

  “The bard? And you’re still alive? Good for you!”

  She was about to ask why he sounded so surprised when the wizard’s gaze slipped past her. “Roderick, you irredeemable scamp! Get that flea-ridden arse of yours over here for a hug!”

  Moog received each newcomer with the same relentless enthusiasm. He greeted Cura with a kiss on either cheek and a raised eyebrow for the new ink on her left arm. As Brune climbed over the rail he spread his hands. “The Big ol’ Bear himself!”

  The shaman’s smile was pained. “The Wolf, now.”

  “Wolf?” The wizard studied him a moment. “I see it now, yes. It looks good on you, boy.”

  Brune straightened, smiling. “I think so, too.”

  “Uncle Moog!” Rose seemed happier to see the old wizard than her own father, who she’d met with a curt nod, a stiff embrace, and a muttered “Thank you” when he’d crossed the ice to meet her earlier.

  “Rosie!” Moog threw his spindly arms around her. “And Freecloud! Tits on a treant, man, could you be any handsomer? No offence, Brune.”

  The shaman shrugged. “I’m used to it.”

  “And who is this sombre chap?” Moog asked of Daon Doshi. “You look like a baragoon ate your lunch!” Doshi offered a mumbled explanation of who he was and what “that idiot satyr” had done to his beloved skyship. “Doshi, is it?” The wizard looked surprised. “Any relation to—”

  “Yes,” said Doshi, without elaborating further.

  Moog clapped his hands. “Excellent! Would you care to fly us home, then?”

  The captain’s face lit up like curtains on fire. “Really?”

  “Of course! Frankly, I’m surprised I got us here in one piece! Got a little dicey coming over those mountains, eh Gabe?”

  Gabriel’s grimace suggested that dicey was something of an understatement.

  “Your engine was probably freezing,” Doshi pointed out. “You should have landed, smashed up the ice, and run it backward for a bit.”

  “See? Gabe? Didn’t I say the engine was freezing?”

  “You said you were freezing.”

  “I was! But we’re in warmer hands now!” Moog slapped the worn leather headrest of the pilot’s chair. “Take us to Coverdale, my good man! Assuming it’s still there.”

  “Why wouldn’t it be?” Tam asked.

  Moog’s mirth withered briefly. “Because the Horde was twenty miles north of it when we left.”

  Sometime later, when Rose had finished calling her father every foul word Tam had ever heard and many more she hadn’t, they set out for Coverdale through a darkening sky.

  The dhow’s slanting sail, which was peaked like a tent above the flat-bottomed hull, flashed now and then as it raked static energy from the passing clouds. A single tidal engine whirred at the stern, wrapped in a halo of icy mist.

  The Old Glory’s deck was furnished with time-worn sofas. Tam sat alone on one, Rose and Freecloud on another. Arcandius Moog lay stretched out on a third, fast asleep. Tam guessed the journey north had taxed the old man’s endurance. There was a modest bar at the stern, behind which Brune was pouring and re-pouring drinks for Rod and Cura, who were seated on stools out front.

  Gabriel was standing at the skyship’s starboard rail, gazing out at the shadowed scarps of passing mountains. He and Moog had flown above the snowcapped peaks, but Doshi took them between.

  “It’s warmer in the canyons,” the captain explained, “and we can use the wind at our backs to make up time. It took you three days to reach us?” He smirked, and Tam caught a glimpse of his old charm returning. “I’ll have us back in two.”

  Gabe’s sword, the legendary Vellichor, was slung sideways across his back. Even sheathed, Tam could feel a sense of preternatural tranquility radiating from the Archon’s ancient blade. Occasionally, as the cold night breeze swept over the deck, she could smell it—except it didn’t smell like metal, or oil, or anything like a sword was supposed to. It smelled like lilacs and lush green grass, the fading scents of an unreclaimable spring.

  In the end, Rose’s anger was doused by two simple words: the name of the man with whom Gabe had left her daughter while he and the wizard raced north.

  “Clay Cooper?” she said warily.

  “She’s at his place south of town,” Gabe said. “And the Horde’s been camped in Grey Vale for weeks.”

  “Camped?” Freecloud’s ears twitched inquisitively.

  “Waiting, it seems,” piped Moog, who apparently wasn’t sleeping after all. “Though it’s anyone’s guess what for. Brontide could be stomping through horse-turds in Cartea by now, but instead, the Carteans came to Coverdale. A few thousand of them arrived on the morning we left, and twice as many Agrians showed up the day before that.”

  “So many?” asked Brune, choosing a bottle of orange brandy from the cabinet beside him.

  “It’s not only them,” Moog said, sitting up. “Half the mercs from Conthas to the Great Green Deep are in Coverdale by now. Every day Brontide tarries in Grey Vale he loses the advantage his numbers give him.”

  Since no one else dared to ask, Tam did. “How big is the Horde?”

  Gabriel pushed himself from the rail. He slipped Vellichor off his back and set the blade at his feet as he sat down be
side Tam. “The host that overran Cragmoor was no more than sixty thousand strong, but by the time it reached Coldfire Pass there were thousands more.”

  “Everyone loves a winner,” said Brune, using his teeth to pull the stopper from the brandy’s neck.

  Gabe looked grim. “After Coldfire it got even bigger. I’d guess Brontide has more than a hundred thousand with him by now.”

  “How did they make it through the pass?” Tam wondered out loud. “Didn’t Saga hold it for three days against a thousand walking dead?”

  That drew a smirk from Gabe. “You can’t believe every story you hear, Tam.”

  “It was a thousand and one,” said Moog with an exaggerated wink.

  Cura waited until Brune splashed brandy into a copper mug before stealing it for herself. “I have a theory,” she said, swirling her cup. “Most of these brand-new bands can’t fight for shit. They wouldn’t know an honest battle if it spat in their face. They prance around in face-paint and pretty armour, fighting basement-bred monsters that are either starved to death or drugged senseless. I mean, we’ve done our share of touring, sure, but most of these brats’ve never taken on a real contract, or stepped foot in the Heartwyld, or gone up against anything with a real chance of killing them.”

  Doshi steered around a looming rock outcropping. The candle-jars swayed and set their shadows dancing.

  “I fear you’re right,” Gabe conceded. “Although half the bands who fought at Castia were just as green.”

  “Green as the god of orcs,” said Moog.

  “It may not be the mercenaries’ fault,” suggested Freecloud, drawing eyes from all over the ship.

  Rose, who was lying against him, craned her neck. “How do you mean?”

  “The Heartwyld Horde was an army fuelled by hate,” he said. “The Heathen promised them the chance to avenge themselves for the suffering they’d endured at the hands of the Republic. Lastleaf may have intended to establish an empire, but his Horde was out for blood.”

  Tam hadn’t known the Heartwyld Horde had anything to avenge, or that monsters had suffered under the heel of Castia’s Republic. There were no songs about that—not that she knew of, anyway.